Still I can picture her seated on a log and sunning herself at her door. She is withered, shrivelled and lined, the poor old soul, like a dried fig. Brushing away the teasing flies, she drinks in the sunshine, dozes and sleeps the hours away.
“Taking a little nap in the sun, Tante Renaude?”
“Well, see you, I was neither exactly waking nor sleeping—I said my paternosters and I dreamt a bit—and praying, you know, one is apt to doze. Aye, but it is a bad thing when one is past work—the time hangs heavy on hand.”
“Won’t you catch cold sitting out of doors?”
“Me, catch cold? Why I am dry as matchwood. If I was boiled I shouldn’t furnish a drop of oil.”
“If I were you I would stroll round quietly and have a chat with some old crony—it would help pass the time.”
“The old gossips of my time are nearly all gone, soon there won’t be one left. True, there is still the old Geneviève, deaf as a plough, and old Patantane in her dotage, and Catherine de Four who does nothing but groan—I’ve enough of my own ailments. Oh no, it is better to be alone.”
“Why not go and have a chat with the washer-women down there at the wash-house?”
“What, those hussies? who backbite and pull each other to pieces, first one and then the other, the livelong day. They abuse every one and then laugh like idiots. The good God will send a judgment on them one of these days. Aye, but it was not so in our time.”
“What did you talk about in your time?”